Author: Tony

There’s something very rewarding about growing your own food.

We started off by growing our own herbs. But I don’t think herbs really count as food. After all, an herb is basically just a weed. You can snip off a few leaves occasionally to use while cooking, but you can’t exactly make a meal of it.

Last year we planted a tomato plant, but it never produced any fruit. I remember seeing a few blooms on it, but shortly after they appeared a storm came through. The storm either blew or washed all of the blooms off the plant. Therefore, we grew no tomatoes last year.

Undaunted by last year’s failure, we bought two plants this spring and put them in containers on our front porch. Our plants fared much better this year. Each one had countless blooms followed by 10-20 tiny little tomatoes. Finally, the tomatoes have begun to ripen. Here’s a picture of the very first tomato that we picked:

Yes, it tasted as good as it looks. So far we’ve picked about 10 tomatoes from our two little plants, and there are plenty more still growing. If we keep this up we might just have to become farmers.

Let me start off by saying that Paige and I have a wonderful relationship. I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone else.

We’ve never had any problems that we couldn’t talk about rationally and work through (no matter how much money I just wasted on an amp, or a Corvette, or some computer part). Our views on most issues are very similar, and when they differ we can always discuss the topic and see both sides.

It’s sometimes interesting to get a peek into the lives of other couples who aren’t quite as like-minded as we are. With that in mind, here’s a site I just stumbled accross today – Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. I think that’s the longest domain name I’ve ever seen. Here’s just one example of the kinds of things these people argue about:

Our sink is blue and we’re not talking about it. It happened over a week ago; I was leaning over the sink, brushing my teeth, when I noticed that there was a sort of lazuline patina that had seeped over most of the surface. Margret hasn’t mentioned anything about this. Why she hasn’t is that she’s obviously tried to clean the sink with, well, I don’t know, some fluid used for stripping entrenched cerriped colonies from the hulls of submarines or something (they were probably offering three bottles of the stuff for the price of two at Aldi). She is waiting for me to mention it. But I am a wily fox, and will be doing nothing of the sort. I’m no wet-behind-the-ears, naive youth anymore, not by a looooong way, and I can perfectly see the spiked pit the seemingly innocent words, ‘Did you know the sink’s blue’ are covering. It would go – precisely – like this:
Me: Did you know the sink’s blue?
Margret: Yes. I did. I used a jungle exfoliant produced by the Taiwanese military to clean it, and it discoloured the surface.
Me: Oooooooo. K.
Margret: Well maybe, just maybe, if you cleaned the sink once in a while…
You see what she did there? Now I’m facing a whole day of ‘When did you last…?’ Well, not this canny fellow – not this time, my friends.
Our sink is blue and we’re not talking about it.

Be sure you have plenty of free time before you visit this page. I’ve been reading for a long time now and I’m only half way through it.

Here’s even more proof that George Lucas has lost his mind:

It looks like he’s still making changes to the original three movies so they will match up better with the new trilogy. The consensus among fans of the original series seems to be “why is he trying to make the old, good movies more like the new, bad movies!”

I’m still upset by the changes he’s already made. Everyone knows that Greedo didn’t shoot first.

First off, rumor has it that the Emporer’s face is going to be changed in The Empire Strikes Back to match the new movie. DVD Dungeon has a screenshot.

This is not so bad. I might even be able to live with this change. Actually, most people probably wouldn’t even notice.

The next change is rumored to be in Return of the Jedi. At the end of the movie we see the spirits of Anakin, Yoda, and Obi Wan. According to DVD Dungeon, the actor who played Anakin in the original is going to be replaced with the idiot from the new movies. This is just madness.

I’m hoping these are just images that have been doctored. But with the changes Lucas has already made, there’s no way to be sure.

Interesting footnote: Paula walked out of the theater during the original Star Wars when she went to see it as a child…

I see students working on projects almost every day, but it’s not very often that I take time out to recognize truly outstanding work. While I was at Travis yesterday, I noticed a student working on a Haiku that I just had to share with the rest of the world:

I really hate school
It is extremely boring
It just wastes your time.

I hope this kid gets an A.

The guest speaker at my graduation back in December was Texas State Senator Bob Deuell. I still remember when his name was announced, someone behind me said “Wow, they got Bob Dole!” That still cracks me up. That also explains why that person was sitting behind me, they weren’t exactly the “best and brightest.”

Anyway, Mr. Deuell talked for about 20 minutes during the ceremony. I don’t remember most of what he said, but one thing stuck with me that day. He said “Read. Read within your subject and outside your subject. Read fiction and non-fiction. Read everything you can get your hands on. Successful people read all the time.”

I’ve always enjoyed reading. At first it was mostly science fiction and fantasy, but as I got older I moved on to computer books. It got to the point where I was actually purchasing computer science textbooks to study on my own. I’m probably the only person in the world with a calculus book on my Amazon wishlist. After several years of that I started taking classes in Commerce. During school, I read computer science books exclusively to the point that I pretty much got burned out.

Now that I’ve graduated, I find myself getting back into reading again. Earlier this year I flew through Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Neuromancer by William Gibson. Both of those are really cool sci-fi, Matrix-y books. Most people call these “cyberpunk”. Right now, I’ve just about finished the Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore. After that I’m going to have to read some Dan Brown books since Paige wants to discuss them with me, but she doesn’t want to ruin them for me either. I also have a few recommendations from Geoff.

So what’s the point of all this? Basically, I’m always looking for interesting things to read. I thought if I shared a few of the books I’ve enjoyed with the world, then maybe other people would point out some of their favorites to me. I also want to mention a few websites I’ve found with good reading material:

Read Print – This site is new to me. It looks like what they’ve done is taken some of the more popular books from Project Gutenberg (see below) and cleaned them up for easy online reading. This is a great way to get started reading books online.

Project Gutenberg – As far as I know, this was the first website to make public domain books available for free download online. According to the site, they have over 10,000 books available for download.

I came across one more thing this morning at Kuro5hin.org – an article titled Four Unproduced Screenplays. This article provides links to several different screenplays with writers such as James Cameron and The Wachowski Brothers. The comments that follow also contain some great links such as Alien 3 by William Gibson (not the one that was made into a movie) and Superman Lives by Kevin Smith (yes, that Kevin Smith).

I read most of Superman Lives this morning and I’ve really enjoyed it so far. There’s plenty of comic book action mixed with a touch of Kevin Smith’s humor. I’ve never read a screenplay before, but the seperation of dialog and scene descriptions makes it easy to picture it in your head as if you were actually watching the movie.

I guess I could set up a section of the site just for book reviews, or maybe form some kind book club. Until then, let me know if you come across any interesting books and I’ll do the same.

I can’t think of a better gift for our good friend Geoff than .

I’m sure some of you are wondering why I haven’t posted anything here in a while.

About two weeks ago, around the morning of April 20th, Paige was bitten by a spider. So far she’s been to two different doctors, spent one morning in the emergency room, taken six different prescriptions, and missed eight days of work. It’s been a rough time to say the least.

The doctors aren’t sure exactly what kind of spider it was, but almost everyone else agrees that it was a brown recluse. The bite was made even worse by the fact that the lymph node under her left arm became infected. This infection caused her to break out all over and gave her a really high fever.

Luckily, the antibiotics and pain medicines did there thing and she’s getting better now. She’s still weak from the infection and she has a nasty wound where the bite was, but at least she’s up doing things again. Today was her first day back at work since the morning it happened.

Obviously, I’ve been too busy trying to take care of her and things around the house to post anything here. Thanks for all of the calls of concern, and thanks to Ben for the cake:

Only Ben would send a cake with a spider on it. I didn’t see what Paige did to that part of the cake, but something tells me it was chopped to bits.

Pictures of last night’s show are now up on the Breakout Entertainment website. This address will take you straight to the pictures – http://breakout.tamu-commerce.edu/colin_brad_show.asp.

I grabbed the two pictures of us and uploaded them here:

You’ll notice in some of the other pictures they’re reading lines off of cards. They passed out those cards to everyone in the first few rows. We all wrote a single line of dialog and then turned them back in.

The cards were used in a sort of Shakespearean play. In it, Brad played King Portfolio who was worried about war and money. Colin was his loyal subject Epiglottis. As the play went on they would draw cards at random from a basket and read the line.

Out of all of the cards in the basket, they somehow managed to pick both mine and Paige’s. Mine said “Why do men have nipples?” and Paige’s said “What would you do with that?”

First off, yesterday was Paige’s birthday. Happy birthday, baby!

To celebrate, we went to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood perform last night in Commerce. In case you don’t recognize the names, they’re two of the guys from Whose Line is it Anyway?. Here’s a picture of them:

We had so much fun last night, I don’t really even know where to start. We got to Commerce a little after 5:00pm and went out to eat first at the Panda. The whole time we were eating, Paige was trying to hurry me up so we could get to the show early (it didn’t start until 7:00pm). Finally, I finished my fortune cookie and we drove over to the school.

We got to the auditorium before 6:00pm and about 7-8 people were already in line in front of us. We stood around anxiously until they finally opened the doors at 6:30pm. We handed our ticket stubs to the girl at the door and raced down to the second row. We sat next to the aisle since those people are the most likely to get picked to go on stage.

The show was great, I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time. Of course it was all made up on the spot and it was all hilarious.

The best part of the show (for us anyway) was when Brad Sherwood walked over towards our side of the stage and said “OK, show of hands. How many married couples do we have here tonight?”. Paige and I both immediately raised our hands. Brad looked right at us and said “You two are married?” I don’t remember if I said yes or just nodded my head like a fool, but I did answer him somehow. He turned to another couple in the center of the front row and said “You guys are married, too?” Then he turned back to us and said “Ok, you two come on up and help us out.”

Once we got up on stage, introduced ourselves, and shook hands, they explained the skit. It was called “A Day in the Life of a Married Couple.” Paige and I were standing on opposite sides of the stage. We each had a bell (ding!) and a duck call that you squeeze like a horn (honk!). Brad would play the part of me, and Colin would be Paige. Whenever Brad said something that I might say, Paige would ring the bell. And if he said something that I would not say, she would squeeze the duck call. I would do the same for Colin.

Being on stage was basically just a blur, I don’t remember exactly how it all went. But, I know the skit started off something like this:

Brad pretends to be asleep and snoring.

Ding!

Colin enters with breakfast and says “Good morning dear. Time to wake up.”

Ding!

Brad wakes up and enthusiastically says “Good morning.”

Honk!

Brad changes it to “Just 10 more minutes honey.”

Ding!

Colin says “But I’ve prepared this three course breakfast for you…”

Honk!

“But I brought you this apple…”

Honk!

“Here’s a glass of water…”

Ding!

The morning routine continues on for a while until they finally wind their way around to our love life:

Colin says “Oh Tony, you’re the best lover I’ve ever had.”

Ding! Ding! Ding! (I smiled and everyone laughed.)

Brad replied “Yes, our love-making goes on for hours and hours.”

Honk! (At this point I blushed as everyone really laughed.)

Somehow, things went a little off course at this point. I’m not sure how we got here, but this is how it ended up:

Colin says “I’ll put on my cheerleader uniform like you always wanted.”

Brad replies “OK, and I’ll put on this… uh, giant ape costume.”

(Paige and I are both laughing so much I don’t think either of us did anything.)

Colin jumps up and cheers “Go team!”

Brad dances around like an ape and says “Who’s your monkey!”

There’s nothing in the world more fun than being embarrassed on stage in front of about 1,100 people.